


Curatives

by grey_sw (grey)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Lazy Mornings, Love, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Potions, Rain, Sleep, Sleepiness, Video Game Mechanics, welcome to today's meeting of the lucis caelum / scientia mutual aid society
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 01:47:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13847505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey/pseuds/grey_sw
Summary: A rainy day, twenty five energy drinks, and thee: the recipe for a lazy afternoon with Noct and Ignis.-- Noct can feel the magic rise in him, slowly, bit by bit. It flows out through the Crystal, lost though it may be, and then through Noct into Ignis, tugging gently at the bond that hums between them. He envisions it as a river of spectral blue water, shifting and sparkling, ever-flowing through the space that lies between him and his retainers.





	Curatives

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing so much angst lately that I just needed to read something with Noct and Iggy being soft and sleepy magic-users together. I promise you that the most upsetting thing in this story (other than the Crystal, I guess?) is Noct being a self-deprecating ball of fluff. enjoy!

> _Potion: An energy drink that takes on healing properties by way of Noctis' powers._
> 
> "I feel kinship with the wizard characters." - Ignis Scientia, _King's Knight_

Noct wakes slowly, rising through successive layers of awareness: first the warmth of the bed as it settles beneath him, then the soft, smooth slide of a blanket against his cheek, and then the distant hiss of the rain. It sounds like static as it strikes the tin roof of the caravan, like a radio tuned to no particular channel. _sss, ssssss._

It's comforting, a muted susurration of white noise. He listens to the rain as it sheets down outside, letting it lull him closer to sleep. He still feels tired, limp like a worn rag, and his back is a throbbing ache. A good night's sleep should've helped more than it has, but he and his friends have been running for days, fighting nonstop without food or rest... and the Crystal always takes its due. 

It comes back to him, then, like it has every morning for what seems like months: the Crystal, lost. His home, bombed and abandoned. He ought to get up, check the time, and drive his retinue onward to Altissia, but right now he can't find the energy to roll over and fish out his phone. He huffs out a sigh, too tired even to feel disappointed in himself.

He trusts Ignis to wake him if he's needed, anyway.

It's that thought that does it, that helps him let go. He flops onto his side, curls up like a fern beneath the blankets, and slips back to sleep with one last yawn.

\---

He wakes again to the sound of someone moving around in the caravan, quiet shufflings punctuated by a grunt. Gladio, then. The rain hasn't let up, either. If anything, the sound has grown even wetter, like the sides of the caravan are draining into one big puddle. They're lucky they weren't caught in it. Noct remembers the last time, at Mynbrum Haven -- the four of them huddled together under sodden canvas, cold and damp, praying that the tent wouldn't give way. 

The thought makes him shiver. He's feeling better, though, strong and settled, and the pain in his back has subsided. _Must've slept for a while,_ he thinks, and snakes his arm out of the blankets to snag his phone.

It says **1:13 PM** , and he's so surprised he almost drops it. He can't remember the last time Iggy let him sleep past noon. He's got no sense of wrongness or danger, but he still swings his legs out of bed in the next instant, cocking his head to listen. All he can hear is the rain. He pulls the privacy curtain open, and takes a few halting steps toward his suitcase... and then backtracks to pull a blanket over his shoulders, because the caravan floor is like _ice_.

"Morning, Highness," Ignis says. He's sitting at the fold-down table by the stove, writing in his little black notebook. "Or afternoon, as the case may be. I'm afraid you've slept through breakfast, but I was loath to wake you... you seemed to need the rest, and I doubt we'll be going out in such dreadful weather. Shall I make you something?"

"Nah, I got it." Noct slips past him, and digs through the provisions bag for one of Iggy's homemade protein bars: cocoa powder and rich groundnut butter, rolled in oats and Cleigne wheat. He bites a corner off of it, chewing as he takes a seat. There's a cold glass of milk waiting for him by the time he gets back; he didn't even see Specs move. 

"Thanks," he mutters through another bite. Ignis hums his acceptance and looks back down at his book, scratching his pen across the page. Noct sits by his side and takes a big gulp of milk, still in his sleep pants, with the blanket draped over his shoulders like a cape. 

"We're taking a snow day, huh?" he asks after a while. Ignis smiles.

"Something like that, yes, but with higher temperatures. I thought we might all benefit by a break. Although..."

He trails off, giving Noct a chance to cut him off. It's always been his habit to soften bad news, no matter how mildly upsetting it may be. Noct just nods at him, and then washes down the last bite of his breakfast bar with what's left of the milk.

"Yeah?"

"I was thinking we could replenish our stock of curatives? If you're feeling up to it, of course."

It's a good idea. They've been taking on more and more difficult hunts, lately, and Noct's been spamming potions to keep them on their feet. They've got a whole pile of energy drinks, bought just yesterday... and Noct _is_ feeling a lot better, flush with power. There's no better time to enchant some curatives.

And if it's going to be raining all day, he and Iggy can crash afterward... 

"Sounds good," he says. "Give me a sec to get dressed."

\---

He throws on his shirt and fatigue pants, slips on a pair of wool socks, and trades the blanket for the familar warmth of his jacket. By the time he's re-emerged from the privacy curtain, the second curtain is open, too: Noct can see Gladio stretched out over the bottom bunk, nose in a novel as usual. Prompto's sitting above him, clicking through the photos on his camera. There's a look of concentration on his face, like the one he gets just before he pulls the trigger, but he's swinging his legs back and forth like a kid. A quiet, lazy morning. 

Or afternoon, as the case may be.

Noct stops by the window to pull the curtain back, marveling at the sheer volume of water outside. He can just make out the blurred oval outline of the Crow's Nest across the way, but beyond that there's nothing but mist. It's like the rain has obliterated the world, and that strikes him as an oddly comforting idea. He and his friends are safe and at ease, tucked away where no one can find them.

He turns back from the window to see that Ignis has already laid out their stash of energy drinks: five for Ignis himself, and twenty or so for his prince. Noct sits down and places the first can in front of him, and then slides another one over to his right, arranging it neatly at three o'clock. His father always says -- _said_ \-- that magic works best if you do it the same way every time. The Crystal is a thing of patterns, of repetition, and generations of Lucis Caelum monarchs have done this the same way, since long before energy drinks existed. Back then this might've been a literal potion, some bitter concoction of roots and herbs. 

Noct likes Crimson Kujata a lot better -- it gives you wings.

Beside him, Ignis tugs his gloves off, folding them with fastidious neatness at his elbow. He lifts the first can, pops the top, shuts his eyes. Noct can feel the magic rise in him, slowly, bit by bit. It flows out through the Crystal, lost though it may be, and then through Noct into Ignis, tugging gently at the bond that hums between them. He envisions it as a river of spectral blue water, shifting and sparkling, ever-flowing through the space that lies between him and his retainers. 

Now that the magic is moving, it's all too easy for Noct to fall into its stream, sinking down into the headspace of Kings. His world shrinks down to the table, the drink cans, the Armiger, and Ignis, fading to black beyond the bright circle of his awareness.

He takes up the can in front of him and opens it, listening to the sharp hiss it makes. He can smell it, too, a hint of spice with an undertone of cough syrup. He's never liked the flavor, but at this point it just smells and tastes like healing to him. Like relief. He concentrates on that feeling, on the itching sensation he gets as his wounds pull shut and knit themselves back together. The very first time, he'd called forth his magic without meaning to -- Ignis was hurt, and he'd wanted to help, and the Crystal had answered him -- and it's that memory that comes back to him now, the image of pride and surprise on his oldest friend's face.

Noct takes that moment, sharpens it until he can almost reach out and touch it, and then pushes the essence of it into the can. The liquid inside fizzes madly. Noct knows it must be sparkling, too, bursting with eerie green light, but he still has his eyes closed, because this part is critical. He lifts his left hand, calling forth a spectral bottle. It's a close cousin to the magic flasks he uses in combat, a fluted glass bauble formed through the power of Kings. 

He's always thought the design is kind of dorky, actually, but tradition is tradition. And tradition dictates that the next step is to uncork the bottle and decant the potion before it stops bubbling ( _when it comes to potions we always say **decant** rather than **pour** , Your Highness... and it must be done with a swift and steady hand, not the way a serving boy dumps water into the sink! Please pay proper attention!_) 

There. It's done. He opens his eyes and examines the potion. The liquid inside it glows softly, a perfect shade of mint green, and the cork feels secure. He sets the bottle to his left, at nine o'clock, and then he moves the energy drink at three o'clock to six, and the one at the end of the line to three. 

Breathes in, breathes out, begins again. And again. And again.

He lets his mind wander as he works. Ignis is a steady presence by his side, within the magic: patience, kindness, a streak of wry humor, and just a touch of the anxious worry he's never been able to shake. Ignis keeps his innermost feelings private, even now, but there's still a savory warmth that soaks into all his other emotions, like cinnamon and woodsmoke. Something he can't or won't hide, not entirely. Not from Noct.

As he sets another finished bottle aside, Noct wonders what he himself might feel like to Ignis. He's almost afraid to know. He's sure that _he's_ no comfort to Ignis, to the patient soul who's worked since age six to keep him safe and free of scandal -- Ignis is a debt he knows he can never repay, no matter how his chamberlain might deny it. But Noct shies away from that thought, because it's come between them before, and he doesn't want it to get between them again. 

Instead he reaches out, checking in on his friend. Ignis is not of royal blood, so the power that Noct can unlock with a single thought is a long, deep process for him. It's concentration instead, a sustained effort of will. Ignis' mind narrows down to nothing beyond the neck of the bottle in his hand, and the healing magic that drains down into it: total focus, pinpoint sharp. Each thought drags the magic a little further downward, a little more deeply nestled among molecules of sucrose and taurine. Then Ignis' concentration snaps, just as the bottle goes a soft sea green, and he corks it with the barest touch of a flourish. 

Noct's finished six bottles already. Sometimes the world they live in seems deeply unfair. 

That's another thought he shouldn't dwell on. Ignis has worked for a lifetime to master magic that Noct learned to control at age eight, sure, but he would (most likely?) point out that Noct is equally terrible at things like mathematics, and cosmogyny, and eating like a responsible adult with a working sense of what's healthy. _Play toward your strengths_ is the sort of advice Ignis most likes to give, because it's universally valid, so Noct does his best to accept the fact that his _strengths_ largely consist of being not quite one hundred percent horrible at everything, and also a literal enchanted prince.

(An enchanted prince who just finished three more potions, Noct thinks, and resets his _mise-en-place_.)

Iggy's the only one in the world he can share this with, because he's the only one with more than a scrap of talent for Noct's magic. Gladio and Prom can throw a flask if need be, but Gladio's much better with a shield, and Prompto's... not his best with fragile ornaments full of lightning (though he's somehow fine when his vest is heavy with grenades?) No, it's only Ignis, and it always has been. Magical aptitude is rare outside the royal family and the Kingsglaive, rare enough to spark a few rumors... but perhaps the magic came to Ignis through perseverance and hard work, just like every other skill he's developed? Or maybe it happened because they've always been together, _always_. Maybe it's because Iggy's heart has always been tangled together with Noct's, and part of Noct's heart is his magic.

_Or maybe,_ whispered at least one of those rumors, _maybe Scientia is the secret love child of Our Majesty and the Holy Oracle_ , and _oh_ how Ignis had laughed. A little too long and a little too loud, actually, until Noct had huffed and told him to shut up. 

It wasn't _that_ funny.

They work like that side by side for an hour or two, together in silence. Noct becomes aware of his surroundings, from time to time, before they fade back out again. He catches some chatter as Gladio and Prompto warm up a late lunch on the stove (spoiler alert: it's Cup Noodle), and he's aware of the sound of the rain as it changes, growing softer and less severe. Maybe it'll stop, and they can hit up the Crow's Nest for dinner? Iggy will be in no shape to cook... 

He checks in, and yep, the sense he gets from Ignis is weary and distant. His formidable focus is starting to slip. The power Noct felt earlier is trending toward his usual lethargy, too, and his lower back is starting to twinge, but he's still got eight or nine potions to go. Part of him whispers _we could stop here_ , but he pushes the thought away, reaching for another can. Any one of these curatives could save his friends' lives, and there's nothing that matters more to him than that, nothing. Not even a nap.

He pulls away from that idea, too, and from Ignis' increasingly dozy thoughts. (Gladio's never going to let Noct live down the time he made a batch full of Sleep instead of Cure... especially since Gladio was the one who had to sling an unconscious Prompto over one shoulder and run him out through half of Crestholm Channels.) Instead he redoubles his efforts, forcing another shot of healing into the can in front of him. 

He gets a quick sense of Ignis as he finishes off another potion beside him, fighting through the haze. Iggy's motions have grown sluggish and deliberate, each one the cost of a hundred. He lifts his hand with glacial patience, calls forth the magic spark by painful spark. It dances through his fingers and down into the bottle in slow motion, leaving a building headache in its wake. The metaphor Ignis has for the magic is _ice_ , not _water_ , and the image that goes with his weariness is a bloom of early-morning frost on the windshield of the Regalia, shrinking to nothing in the relentless blast of the defroster.

Time to stop thinking, time to just be. Noct lets his hands move on their own, lets the feeling of healing overtake him, and leaves Ignis to the enormity of his own task. His trust in him is forged in the steel of a million late-night pickups and subtle interventions, honed through years of patient indulgence; no level of exhaustion will break it. 

Iggy will do this, because Noct asked him to. Because that's what Ignis does. 

Noct's equivalent is a perverse, almost trolling brand of stubbornness -- an _oh, yeah? see if I won't!_ \-- and that's what carries him through to the end. He comes back to himself to find the final potion nestled in his palm, gleaming like a glowworm. He smirks down at it, bright with earned pride, and then almost drops it as the pain and exhaustion starts to crawl up his spine. Overdid it, maybe? 

He glances over at Ignis, and chokes back a laugh. One last potion is still clenched in his hand, but Ignis isn't seeing it: his eyes are wide and unfocused behind his glasses, and his mouth has dropped open by a inch. _Stasis would be a lot more funny if I didn't know how shitty it feels,_ Noct thinks, and reaches over to push a little more magic into his friend. 

Ignis starts blinking again at Noct's touch, but only slowly. He looks fried, crisped, like he's blown out all his serotonin. Noct can call on the Crystal to recover his own magic, as long as he's somewhere safe, but the only thing that'll help Ignis is true and honest rest. Noct pries the potion from his fingers with care, setting it with the others, and then bumps Iggy's shoulder with his own. 

"C'mon, Specs, let's go to bed. You earned it."

"Noct," Ignis sighs. His eyes are half-lidded now, distant and blank. Moving right now must feel like swimming through treacle, but he still lifts his arm and slides it over Noct's back to tug him close.

Of course he does. 

"That's me," Noct says. "Right here." He reaches over to pull Ignis' glasses off, slow and careful. He folds them and tucks them away beside the potions, but by the time he turns back Ignis is already starting to slump, burying his face in Noct's shoulder. He looks like he's about to crash right there at the table.

"No way, dude," Noct tells him. "My back will explode. C'mon, get up." 

He gets his shoulder underneath Ignis' and stands him up, the way Gladio taught him ( _you gotta lift with your legs and not your back, Princess. Got any muscle in those noodles?_ ) He has to strain a little to pull it off without tweaking his back, calling on the Crystal to pick up the slack. He forgets how heavy Ignis is. He'd be the biggest guy in nearly every room, if not for the fact that Gladio is almost always standing right next to him. 

"Come _on_ , Specs," Noct mutters, and drags them both through the curtain and over to the beds. Ignis tries his best to walk, but his legs aren't worth much at the moment, and his boots just scuff their way across the tile. Noct is left carrying the majority of his weight. He knows he'll never get Ignis up onto the top bunk, so he doesn't even try. Instead he drops him down onto the bottom bed with a grunt... and watches as he starts to list sideways.

Noct really does laugh, then. Specs looks so _lost_ , slumped over in all his suspenders-and-pinstripes finery. His brow beetles beneath his spiked hair at the sound of Noct's amusement, and the sight becomes even funnier: he looks like a grumpy cactuar. Noct almost ( _almost_ ) calls Prompto over to immortalize the moment, but he decides he'd rather live til tomorrow. 

He kneels instead, with a huff of affection, and starts pulling off Iggy's boots. He knows better than to try to get his pants off, too, because he's never met anyone who likes to stay covered up as much as Ignis does. (Noct's memory of the Assassin's Festival is one long blur of Prompto shit-talking him into a disgusting succession of garbage cans, Gladio picking up girls left and right, and Ignis shuffling awkwardly in his cosplay outfit.) It's too bad, really, because the way Iggy fills out those Crownsguard training tanks is something to behold. The hard planes of his belly sitting stark against his trim waist, and the way that same waist slips down into tight jeans... it makes Noct feel things, sometimes. Makes him want to touch, to find out if Iggy's as strong there as Noct thinks he is.

Sometimes he's sure that Ignis would let him; sometimes he thinks that Iggy might like that, too. There are times when he turns to catch Iggy looking at him like he's made of gold and spun glass, like one of his father's treasures. Ignis always glances away afterward, adjusting his glasses, but that look, that _feeling_... it's cinnamon and woodsmoke. The moment's got to be right, because he knows he's just as likely to scare Specs back into shyness, but one of these days Noct's going to have to make a move.

But not today. Today he gets Iggy's boots off, and unsnaps his suspenders, and lays him down on the blankets just the way he is. 

"Noct," Ignis sighs again, just the barest whisper of a breath, and then he curls onto his side and lets himself sleep. Noct smiles down at him for a long moment, watching his chest rise and fall. Then he pulls his own jacket off, kicks out of his pants, grabs the blanket he'd worn earlier, and pulls it over them both.

"G'night, Specs," he says. But after five minutes or so he grabs his phone off the side table and starts up King's Knight, still nestled under the blanket. Prompto's already logged in, and he sends Noct a photo of Gladio's shins hanging down off the short caravan bed. The shot cuts off artfully at the top of his jeans.

_these beds are teeny_

Noct snorts and sends a dark and blurry macro shot of Iggy's hands curled up next to his phone, close enough to touch.

_sure are._

_cute, u finally killed him... rip, noble cguard ಥ﹏ಥ up for kenny's special 2nite?_

_yeah, sure_ , Noct sends. _after I wake up._

**Author's Note:**

> (noct knows what mise-en-place is because ignis won't shut up about it)
> 
> (I envision endless reams of cooking ~advice~ that noct will never, ever be able to forget) 
> 
> (the equivalent in iggy's own life is TURN THE ROD TOWARD THE FISH)


End file.
